Dyson made a Google Glass prototype 13 years ago

Proof of concept sketch for the final design of the Dyson Halo, codename N066

Dyson

Eleven years before Google Glass was unveiled before the world's
eyes, an on-head, augmented reality personal assistant was already
in development in the most unlikely of places: Dyson. Hidden among
the cyclone chambers, hypersonic motors and bladeless fan
prototypes was a lone team of engineers putting together the device
of tomorrow, yesterday. But what happened to it, and why has it
never appeared until today, 21 years (and more than 4000 patent
applications) since James Dyson began inventing under the company
name? We talked with the father of modern industrial design to find
out.

The Dyson Halo (code-named NO66) was intended to be a personal
assistant, with two computer desktops displayed through prisms to
the side of the user's vision, creating the illusion of a 10-inch
screen projected a metre in front of them. The headset also
featured a microphone and earpiece, for receiving messages from the
Siri-like assistant (a text-to-speech module for reading out
emails) and dictating voice commands and emails to the computer. It
even featured a solid-state gyro, which worked to "pin" on-screen
objects to the background as the user moved their head.

A Dyson researcher wearing the Halo. Mounted on his belt are the computer unit and power pack required for early 21st Century wearable tech

The concept is identical to Glass, however this being 2001, the
technology was slightly larger and less form-fitting. The headset
had to be connected to a belt-mounted computer and phone, which in
turn were connected to a power supply -- all of which were
significantly heavier than was practical. But all prototypes have
to begin somewhere, and had development continued for the next ten
years, they may have ended up with something as polished and
refined as Google's, if their concept sketches are anything to go
by. But what drove a company whose main specialism is electric and
digital motors to pursue the wearable holy grail?

"We constantly develop new technology and look for new ways of
doing things," James Dyson told Wired.co.uk. "Ten years ago a
bright physicist at Dyson had an idea for a different type of
computer. He developed a headset that filmed in the direction
of the user's head, with displays to the side for pictures and
text." The prototype ran on X86 architecture using a slightly
modified Windows operating system, "We wanted to give it
compatibility with existing software so that it could double up as
a desktop." One of the aims for Halo was that it could be worn when
needed, such as driving or when otherwise on-the-go, and then
docked into a monitor like plugging a laptop into a TV.

Screenshot of the main menu displayed on the Dyson Halo

Dyson

Concept diagram from 2003 showing some of the hard inputs of the Halo, it also took voice commands and could project a virtual keyboard for the user to type on

Dyson

On top of audio inputs, the device also had visual input from a
front-facing camera, which -- when combined with the heads-up
display -- allowed the Halo to project a keyboard onto the desk in
front of the user that they could "type" on. There were a range of
other, more traditional, inputs as well, including a wrist-mounted
pointer nub, similar to the one in the middle of the keyboard of
old laptops, for controlling the cursor. All the groundwork
appeared to be done, so why was the project canned after three
years, and what happened to the team who almost beat Google to the
punch?

"The headset marked a massive departure from screen-based work
and we felt that viewing a display through a spectacle type headset
with connecting wires to a phone was too bulky. Instead our focus
was on developing vacuum cleaner technology and the Dyson digital
motor. At that stage we were novices in electric motors," James
told us. "The Halo team is now disbanded -- working on lots of
other secret projects, but I can't say much more than
that!" Around the time the Halo project was shelved, Dyson was
attempting to cross the Atlantic gap and enter the American
market.

The single-screened TFT prototype of the Dyson Halo

Dyson

The Halo was one of three canned projects that Dyson
revealed on the company's 21st birthday today (2 June, 2014), the
others were a diesel air filter which made use of the company's
vacuum heritage, including the ability to remove particles as small
as 0.5 microns, and a hydrogen fuel cell, which incorporated the
digital motor at the heart of most of Dyson's products. The fuel
cell could still see a revival now that the potential has been
proven, but after three years' research it was shelved along with
the others.

But a failed project is never truly a failure for a company like
Dyson, as James explained: "No research is ever wasted, sometimes
technology finds application elsewhere. Dyson Halo gave us some
early insights into visual mapping -- an area we are now investing
heavily, with our £5m robotics lab at Imperial College London. We
are aiming to create a generation of intelligent robots who
literally see and understand the world around them."